The use of wireless body area networks (WBANs) in healthcare applications has made it convenient to monitor both health personnel and patient status continuously in real time through wearable wireless sensor nodes. However, the heterogeneous and complex network structure of WBANs has some disadvantages in terms of control and management. The software‐defined network (SDN) approach is a promising technology that defines a new design and management approach for network communications. In order to create more flexible and dynamic network structures in WBANs, this study uses the SDN approach. For this, a WBAN architecture based on the SDN approach with a new energy‐aware routing algorithm for healthcare architecture is proposed. To develop a more flexible architecture, a controller that manages all HUBs is designed. The proposed architecture is modeled using the Riverbed Modeler software for performance analysis. The simulation results show that the SDN‐based structure meets the service quality requirements and shows superior performance in terms of energy consumption, throughput, successful transmission rate, and delay parameters according to the traditional routing approach.

Underwater communication is a diverse and complex environment and has many problems. There are many problems in modeling and operating underwater networks. Physical and data link layer specifications for underwater networking should be taken into account in terms of quality of service metrics. In this study, we construct an underwater simulation environment as a cross-layer design consisting of physical and data link layers for the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) Network. The IoUT network has sensors with various priorities, a central node as a hub and a gateway as a buoy. The underwater sensors communicate with CSMA/CA-based IEEE 802.15.6 protocol on low frequencies. For a more realistic communication channel, all the features of the acoustic channel are designed and performance analyzes are discussed. In addition, the proposed IoUT is compared with terrestrial network results in terms of bit error rate, signal-to-noise ratio, packet loss ratio, end-to-end delay, radio receiver utilization, and throughput. We claim that we have made a realistic IoUT network, especially for divers, autonomous underwater vehicles with specific sensors, or for similar purposes.